Employment Rights Bill 2024: What Employers Need to Know

Current position:  

Currently, all women are entitled to 52 weeks maternity leave and partners are entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave. To qualify for this leave, they must have 26 weeks of continuous service up to the 15th week before the baby is due, and earn an average of at least £123 a week. For babies expected after 6 April 2024, employees must tell you the due date at least 15 weeks before the baby is expected. They must tell you when they want their leave to start, and how much leave they want to take, at least 28 days before. 
 
You must make sure your paternity & maternity leave and pay policies are clear and easily accessible to staff.  

Current Paternity Rules  
Current Maternity Rules 

Proposed changes:  

Employees will be entitled to paternity pay and unpaid parental leave from day 1 of employment. Employees who are either pregnant, currently taking maternity, adoption or shared parental leave already have additional protection from redundancy when on maternity leave (effective from 6th April 2024) with this protection ending 18 months on from the exact date the baby is born. The bill plans to ban dismissals of women who are pregnant, on maternity leave, or during the 6 months return to work period (with some exceptions). The bill also plans to expand existing powers in relation to adoption leave, shared parental leave, neonatal care leave and bereaved partners paternity leave to enable regulation of dismissal in the period after a person returns to work after taking one of these forms of leave.

Bereavement Leave:

A new day 1 right will be introduced allowing employees to take at least one week of bereavement leave. The detail of the relationship that the employee must have had is still to be confirmed. 

Current position:

Staff can request flexible working arrangements as a day-one right such as compressed working hours or working from home from their employer. However, there has been no duty on the employer to agree to such arrangements apart from the usual best practice guidance. Currently employees can make up to 2 applications per year to request flexible working arrangements.

Proposed changes:

The bill plans to strengthen the latest legislation changes that took place in April 2024, where employers may only refuse a request for flexible working where it is deemed as unreasonable to grant such a request. This seeks to create a presumption that flexible working requests are approved unless it is not feasible on business grounds to approve the request. Any refusal of a flexible working request must be given in writing and reasonable, with the following eight business reasons listed below in legislation remaining the same: 

• extra costs that will damage the business 

• the work cannot be reorganised among other staff 

• people cannot be recruited to do the work 

• flexible working will affect quality 

• flexible working will affect performance 

• the business will not be able to meet customer demand 

• there’s a lack of work to do during the proposed working times 

• the business is planning changes to the workforce 

Employers will now have to clarify (a) the reason(s) for any refusal of the application and (b) explain why their refusal on such ground (or grounds) is reasonable. Breaching these regulations, as per the current legislation, could lead to employers being liable for up to 8 weeks pay to the employee.

Current position:

Unlike a traditional contract of employment, a zero-hours contract offers no guarantee of work.

It Is simply an agreement between two parties where one may be asked to perform work for another but with no minimum set contracted hours.  

The advantages for employees of a zero-hours contract can include; a flexible schedule, an increased chance of permanent employment, the freedom to have multiple jobs, a temporary source of income and gaining valuable work experience.

The potential downsides of this however, can include unpredictable work hours and income.  There have been no statutory restrictions on this type of contract, so employers have always had the freedom to use them and offer workers varied working hours on a week-by-week basis.  

Proposed changes: 

Under the bill, employers will have to offer workers on zero-hours contracts and workers with a ‘low’ number of guaranteed hours, who regularly work more than these hours, the ability to move to guaranteed-hours contracts which reflect the hours they regularly work over a 12-week reference period.  

If more hours become regular over time, subsequent reference review periods will provide workers with the opportunity to reflect this in their contracts. There will also be a right to reasonable notice of a shift for workers and a duty to compensate them for cancelling shifts without reasonable notice. 

Zero-hour contracts are now deemed ‘exploitative’ and employers will not be allowed to require zero hours workers to comply with one-sided flexibility requirements. 

Current position: 

This practice refers to employers dismissing staff to then re-engage them immediately on new contractual terms which are typically less favourable. This practice has been controversial and so a Statutory Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement was implemented to guide employers to encourage a more ethical approach to any organisational change. The Code states that Fire and Rehire should be used as a last resort after exhausting alternative solutions.

Proposed changes: 

This change will clamp down on ‘Fire and Rehire’ which will only be permissible where corporate restructuring requires such a practice in the event there is no alternative option. 
 
Notably, the bill will ensure it is automatically unfair to dismiss an employee due to the principal reason being that they reject the proposal to vary the terms and conditions of their employment contract. Similarly, it will be automatically unfair if the employer dismisses the employee and then re-hires the employee (or recruits another individual) under new terms of employment with substantially the same role and duties. 
 
There is an exception which the employer could rely on whereby the termination and re-engagement and the variation of the individual’s contract is essential due to the financial instability of the organisation. In practice this exception will be extremely difficult to rely on. 

A government consultation was opened on this matter and was closed on 2nd December 2024. 

Current position: 

Employees must serve two years of continuous employment to have the right to bring an unfair dismissal claim against their employer. This means that employers can dismiss an employee with less than two years service without the need to demonstrate a fair reason for dismissal, and without having any obligation to take the employee through a fair disciplinary or dismissal procedure.

Proposed changes:  

Under the new bill, the plan is to remove the two year unfair dismissal qualifying period and to replace it with a new statutory period which although is yet to be confirmed, is likely to be up to nine months. This will then be referred to as the ‘initial period of employment’.  

It is not clear how the period will operate, although one likely outcome is that employers will need to follow a set process, potentially contained within a code of practice. The process needed to lawfully dismiss an employee during the probationary period will be less than that required for any employee who has completed the period although it is likely to involve significant steps including a meeting and written reasons for termination. (suggestion to remove this- best keep this one simplified until full details are disclosed, lots of hearsay at the moment). 

The reforms to unfair dismissal will not come into effect any sooner than autumn 2026, and until then the current qualifying period will continue to apply. 

Current position:

Currently you must follow ‘collective consultation’ rules if you’re making 20 or more employees redundant within any 90 day period at a single establishment.

Proposed changes: 

The bill will remove the reference to ‘at one establishment’ now and will ensure that when an employer is proposing on making 20 or more redundancies within a 90-day period, it is the number of redundancies considered across the whole business (i.e. across all sites or all offices) will in order to trigger collective consultation and notification to the Secretary of State. As a result, it is likely that collective redundancies will be more common. Employers will need to consider the structure of their redundancy processes in light of this and adjust timelines as appropriate. 

Current Position:

Any employer with 250 or more (150 in Scotland) employees on a specific date each year (the ‘snapshot date’) must report their gender pay gap data. 

If you have to report, you must report and publish your gender pay gap information within a year of your snapshot date. In Scotland the employer must publish information on the percentage difference among its employees between men’s average hourly pay (excluding overtime) and women’s average hourly pay (excluding overtime). The snapshot date is 31 March for most public authority employers, and 5 April for everybody else. 

If you have fewer than 250 employees on your snapshot date, you can still report if you would like to. 

New changes: 

The bill includes a new provision which will require organisations with 250 or more employees to publish an equality action plan every 12 months. The plan should include steps that the employer is taking to advance equality and opportunity between male and female employees, including how the employer is addressing the gender pay gap and how the employer is supporting employees going through menopause.  

Employers should start considering the steps that they are taking in this area before these disclosure obligations come into force.

From 26th October 2024, employers have a duty to prevent third party sexual harassment by making sure they have a robust anti sexual harassment policy and procedure in place. 
 
Under the bill, employers should take “all” reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment including those who blow the whistle on sexual harassment and including protection from all types of harassment by third parties. This can include for example, clients and customers. 
 
If an employer fails to take reasonable steps in accordance with this duty, the compensation awarded can be increased by up to 25%.

Employers may wish to consider taking practical steps, for example undertaking risk assessments and creating, reviewing and circulating all policies and procedures.

Current Position:

Currently, a trade union needs to demonstrate that it has membership of at least 10% of its proposed bargaining unit before making a formal request for recognition to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC). 
 
Under section 1 of the Employment Rights Act, employers are required to provide their workers and employees with a written statement of particulars of employment. 

Proposed Position:

The bill repeals the existing anti-trade union laws brought in by the previous administration and looks to modernise union access in the workplace. The bill gives power to the Secretary of State to vary this percentage to any number between 2% and 10%. The bill also removes the requirement that a trade union needs to demonstrate to the CAC that it is likely to achieve majority support on a recognition ballot, meaning that the only requirement on application to the CAC is for the required membership percentage to have been met. 
 
Additionally, the bill removes the requirement for a trade union ballot of members to have the support of at least 40% of the bargaining unit, instead just retaining the requirement for the ballot to pass on a simple majority of those voting. Similar changes to the thresholds for industrial action ballots and introduces the possibility of electronic balloting for union use, are also included in the bill.  
 
Employers that have non-binding recognition agreements with trade unions or other informal employee representative bodies should be aware that these changes may mean that trade unions will seek formal recognition in the future and it will be easier for them to do so. 
 
The new bill will require employers to regularly inform workers of their right to join a trade union.